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The U.S. Postal Service hit its $15 billion borrowing limit for the first time late last month, the agency confirmed. The Wall Street Journal first reported earlier this week that the USPS reached the limit on the amount of money it can borrow from the Treasury Department and is now dependent solely on its own revenue to sustain operations.

The Senate unanimously approved a bill Tuesday expanding protections for federal whistleblowers. The Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act, authored and introduced by Sen. Daniel Akaka (D-Hawaii), the chairman of a Senate subcommittee on the federal workforce, updates a 1989 law protecting government whistleblowers.

The House Oversight and Government Reform
Committee is probing more than 150 conferences
hosted by 11 agencies since 2005 where wasteful
spending or excessive spending may have have
occurred, according to a committee release.
Rep.
Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), the oversight
chairman,
said the committee is using the lavish $823,000
regional conference hosted by the General
Services Administration in 2010 as a
"benchmark"
to compare other agencies' conference spending.
The committee found the Defense Department has
held 64 such conferences.

Agencies are missing out on billions of dollars in savings by not using strategic-sourcing contracts, particularly when buying services, according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office. The report finds the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security, Veterans Affairs and Energy spent less than 5 percent of their combined acquisition budgets through strategic sourcing and saved less than $2 billion.

For the second time in as many months, the cash-
strapped U.S. Postal Service says it will
default on a required payment to fund future
postal retirees' health benefits. The
announcement comes after the agency similarly
missed a $5.5 billion payment last month, and as
longterm legislative solutions languish in
Congress.

Despite two explosions and dozens of other security threats, U.S. officials in Washington turned down repeated pleas from American diplomats in Libya to increase security at the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi where the U.S. ambassador was killed, Republican leaders of a House committee said Tuesday.

The House voted Friday to significantly expand
protections for federal employees who expose
fraud, waste and abuse and make it easier to
punish supervisors who try to retaliate against
the whistleblowers.

Investigating the prostitution scandal at the Secret Service, the Homeland Security Department's inspector general uncovered a hotel record suggesting a member of President Barack Obama's team might have been involved, according to a summary of the case submitted to Congress.

The Federal IT Acquisition Reform Act would codify much of the Obama administration's 25-point IT reform plan. The draft bill would go even further in attempting to address long-standing challenges for agency chief information officers.

The Office of Special Counsel found the HHS
Secretary's remarks in February at a gala violated
the law prohibiting federal employees from
engaging in partisan actions. Kathleen Sebelius
contends she didn't break the law.